Caught Up In You. Roni Loren
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tasted. A perfect gift perched there just for him.
No. Not for him. For some other guy, he reminded himself. The reality check made him flinch. This wasn’t fair to Kelsey. She hadn’t given her consent for him to see her this way. He cleared his throat. “Kelsey?”
She startled, her entire body stiffening. “Who’s there? Where’s Colby?”
Before he could respond, her hand went straight to her blindfold, yanking it off.
He held up his palms. “Kelsey.”
She blinked once, twice, then her eyes went round. “Wyatt?”
“Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to burst in on you like this.”
She glanced downward, as if remembering how little she was wearing, and scrambled to her feet. She reached for a robe on the bench behind her and wrapped it around herself with hasty movements. “What the hell are you doing here? How did you even get in?”
He stayed on the far side of the room, not wanting to make her retreat further. “I was worried about you, and no one could tell me where you were. I needed to see if you were okay. So I called in a favor to Jace.”
“Goddammit. He shouldn’t have told you anything.” Her whole face was flushed now. Part of it was clearly anger, but he also sensed shame there, embarrassment. “I didn’t want you to … This is not your business.”
He frowned, rubbing a hand over his jaw and feeling like a jackass for putting her in this position. “You’re right, it’s not. I’m overstepping bounds all over the place, but I had to see you. And God, to see you like this …”
Her expression turned pained, and she looked away. “Right. Like this. Guess you can let whatever shred of respect you had left for me go now.”
He took a tentative step closer, unable to resist the magnetic pull she always seemed to have on him. “Is that what you think? That I’ve lost respect for you? Kelsey, it’s taking everything I have not to haul you off to a private room and tie you to something so I can spend the rest of the night showing you exactly how I’d like to respect you.”
Her face whipped back his way, surprise morphing her features. “What?”
He peeked back at the closed door, hoping he still had a few minutes before being interrupted. “You’re not the only one with secrets.”
She stared at him for a long moment, and he could almost see when the awareness dawned.
“You’re a dom,” she said flatly, not looking at all happy about this conclusion.
The term sounded almost foreign to his ears, it’d been so long since someone had called him that. “I used to be.”
She shook her head and looked to the heavens. “I should’ve known.”
Wyatt crossed his arms. “But Jace told me you were, too. Why are you in here?”
All the starch seemed to leave her body as she knotted the sash around her waist and pulled the robe more tightly around her. “I’m trying to get promoted to a trainer so I can make more money. This is part of the process.”
“How much money do you need, Kelsey?” he said, the possessiveness flaring up in him again. He’d be damned if he was going to let her turn her body over to some random guy so she could get cash.
She pinned him with a warning gaze. “I appreciate your concern, but don’t get any charitable notions. I don’t take handouts, Wyatt. I can handle this.”
The door opened behind him, and he spun around to find his brother with an I-told-you-so look standing behind a man who could only be Colby. The guy was as tall as Wyatt but built like a fucking lumberjack. And he looked mad enough to swing an ax Wyatt’s way. “Kelsey, you all right, sweetheart? Or do I need to haul this fucker outside?”
Wyatt gritted his teeth.
Kelsey raised a palm. “It’s okay, Colby. He’s a friend of mine. And was just leaving. I’m sorry about the delay. I’ll be ready for our session in a second.”
Wyatt looked between the two of them. The hell she would. He stepped closer to Kelsey, thinking fast, altering his original plan. “I can offer you a job.”
“Wyatt—”
“I’ll pay you twenty-five thousand dollars for a week of work,” he said, snagging a figure out of the air. “But you’ll need to come with me right now.”
Her lips parted in surprise. “What?”
“I can explain everything to you, but not here.” He glanced at Colby and Jace, then back to her. “You don’t have to do this right now. At least hear me out first.”
Kelsey stared at him for a stretch of seconds, and he thought she was going to tell him to take his money and fuck off, but then she blew out a breath. “Fine.” She peered past Wyatt. “Colby, I’m sorry, hon. I didn’t mean to screw up your schedule. Can I take a rain check? I need to take care of something.”
Colby shrugged. “Sure thing. Gives me a good reason to cut out early tonight. I had a long week at the day job anyway. Let me know when you want to reschedule.”
Kelsey walked around Wyatt and pushed up on her toes to kiss Colby’s cheek. “You’re a sweetheart.”
His lip curled. “You wouldn’t have said that if you’d gone through my training session.”
Kelsey smiled and patted his arm before peeking back over her shoulder at Wyatt. “Come with me. I have to change, then you can walk me to my cabin and we’ll talk.”
For the first time ever, Wyatt saw the glimmer of dominance in her own eyes, the sass. He was on her turf now and he sensed the confidence of that running through her. The sight should’ve warned him off. He didn’t have a submissive molecule in his DNA. But somehow it only made him want her more.
“Yes ma’am,” he said, the corner of his mouth lifting as he sidled up next to her, slipping a hand on the small of her back. “You’re in charge.”
For now.
Kelsey curled her legs under her in the arm chair, listening to Wyatt make his offer. She was still having trouble wrapping her mind around the fact that Wyatt Austin was here at The Ranch and in her cabin, chatting with her like they had some actual friendship. It was like she’d stumbled through some portal where fantasy and reality collided and morphed. But what Wyatt was suggesting was even more mind-scrambling than finding out that he used to be a dom.
“What do you think?” he asked after laying out his crazy proposal with stoic precision.
She strung together his last few sentences in her head, rewinding and digesting them again to make sure she was hearing him right. Yep. Still crazy. “So, wait a second, you want to pay me all that money to be your date?”
Small frown lines appeared around his mouth, like parentheses framing his dissatisfaction with that explanation. “Sort of. You would be posing as my girlfriend and accompanying me to events at the retreat.”
Unbelievable. She would’ve never thought the man delusional. She reached up to pull the too-tight band from her hair, releasing her ponytail and some of the pressure building in her head. “Wyatt, have you met me? I’m a waitress who grew up in a neighborhood that cops were afraid to go to at night. No one’s going to believe I’m some rich chick from out of state.”
He leaned forward on the couch, bracing his forearms on his thighs, his features half in shadows in the lamplight. “Yes, I have met you. And what I see is a beautiful woman who can think on her feet and who has the ability to charm anyone in a room. I can get you up to speed on the finer details, the etiquette. And maybe you can help me, too, because God knows making small